Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach persuaded the Republican platform committee Tuesday to toughen its language on immigration.

“We recognize that if you really want to create a job tomorrow, you can remove an illegal alien today,” he told the 100-plus representatives to the committee. “That is the way to open up jobs very quickly for U.S. citizen workers and lawfully admitted alien workers.”

The committee agreed to restore 2008 platform planks that didn’t appear in a draft prepared by Republican National Committee staff, who worked in close consultation with Mitt Romney’s campaign.

The platform committee overwhelmingly voted to add language proposed by Kobach calling for the completion of a border fence, the end of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants and an end to sanctuary cities. It also voted to support national E-Verify, an Internet database run by the federal government that makes it harder for undocumented workers to get jobs.

The Hill also reported that the GOP platform called for more legislation like Arizona’s SB 1070, which Kobach authored and which the Supreme Court has found mostly unconstitutional. Romney has said that SB 1070 is a “model” for the nation. But ensuring that the Arizona language made it into the platform yesterday was primarily a Kobach move:

The Republican Party has officially endorsed its backing for Arizona-style state immigration laws, adding into its platform language that such laws should be “encouraged, not attacked” and calling for the federal government to drop its lawsuits against the laws.

That language and other provisions were widely approved by the party after being introduced by the co-author of the Arizona law, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R).

Also via Politico, Kobach made it very clear that these were all Romney’s ideas:

Kobach, who wrote Arizona’s and Alabama’s controversial immigration laws, reminded the group of Republicans in a ballroom at the Marriott hotel here of Romney’s stated positions on the hot-button issue

“These positions are consistent with the Romney campaign,” he said. “As you all will remember one of the primary reasons that Gov. Romney rose past Gov. [Rick] Perry when Mr. Perry was achieving first place in the polls was because of his opposition to in-state tuition for illegal aliens.”

Kobach is right about one thing: all of these anti-immigrant positions are consistent with Romney’s campaign.

Yesterday, Executive Director of America’s Voice Frank Sharry said:

[Mitt Romney’s Republican Party] continue[s] to provide Kris Kobach not just a seat at the table, but an ear to the nominee.

He was right. Kris Kobach does call the shots on immigration for Mitt Romney. That was confirmed yesterday in Tampa.

And in Romney’s own words, here are his positions on key immigration issues:

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